


to serve man

by Zana Todd (captainofthegreenpeas)



Category: Sweeney Todd (2007), Sweeney Todd - Sondheim/Wheeler
Genre: (duh there's cannibalism), Cannibalism, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Multi, Murder, Prostitution, Revenge, Tragedy, Violence, Wordplay, descriptions of rape, i think i've tagged for everything, mentions of lesbian sex, mentions of threesome, serial rape, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 11:50:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21445756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthegreenpeas/pseuds/Zana%20Todd
Summary: Betty Witnor thought the arrival of Sweeney Todd at her landlady's pie shop would save them all. But she of all people should know everything has a cost.
Relationships: Judge Turpin/Original Female Character(s), Nellie Lovett/Original Female Character(s), Nellie Lovett/Sweeney Todd
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	to serve man

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes at beginning and end taken from 'Deceptions' by Philip Larkin

_All the unhurried day,_   
_Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives._

Betty wonders if she should have died on the streets. Life has been death drawn out slowly. _You’re nobody. You’re dirty. You’re a body and nothing more. You never had a chance._ The world has taught her those things over and over again. Her father died in debtor’s prison, her mother in a workhouse, her brother on a gallows, her sister in a lover’s hands. Her inheritance is tears, and a generous bequest of them. She leaves them now to London, to those widows and daughters and sweethearts she will never see.

Without family, Betty Witnor seeks a landlady- if not someone to think of as a mother, at least a woman won’t grope her in the night. Mrs Lovett embraces her, her arms corded with muscle, her words honey and her eyes hungry for the sight of money. With her husband gone, there’s room for a pretty girl. A pretty girl grateful to have found Fleet Street, and showing her gratitude with money. Betty doesn’t dare go upstairs, to the room that once belonged to the barber and his wife. Superstition is her only shield, and danger hangs in that room like a scent. She has no property to fill it with anyway, except a few items she might bleed herself to buy, or find while mudlarking in the Thames, in the black hours after work. In summer, she sleeps at the foot of Mrs Lovett’s bed. In winter, the cold compels Mrs Lovett to relent and let Betty share the bed, greedy for the extra warmth. 

She has no friends, and nothing outside of the factory’s inexorable rhythm. But there’s a roof over her head, and a hot meal waiting for her every night. Her wages help keep Mrs Lovett’s door open on the quiet days. 

Then the hard times come. The factory closes, and meat dries up in London. The masses fight for jobs like dogs over scraps. Every single penny she can find already has a claimant. The factories, the docks, the sweatshops are all stuffed with more flesh than a glutton’s stomach. Even if Betty could find a job and cling to it by her nails, wages are falling as fast as the price of meat is rising. With each farthing added to the price of a pie, another customer is gone. The more Mrs Lovett needs Betty’s rent, the less Betty can pay. 

But her hands aren’t the only part of her body that she can sell. She has heard of Judge Turpin, and his appetite. To the beloved daughters of the capital, he is sweet, rich, tart. To the tarts of London, he is meat. He has money enough to buy the ripest beauties, but his tastes repel all but the withered and the starving who swarm, flies, around the glint of coins. He can play the wooer, but he is no more a lover than an actor is a real king. Coin is the only way he will get consent. 

It is time for her to serve man. The Beadle probes her, feeling her breasts and thighs and bottom, and she tries so hard not to flinch. The last girl- a woman, or at least a girl worn down to womanhood, girlhood slowly flayed away- is no longer pleasing the Judge. Perhaps her screams were boring, her private parts no longer private, her bruises now familiar. She is now broken meats, bones for lesser men to suck and snap. 

It’s not as easy as people think, to serve man. People think she just lies back and lets him do what he wants. She spends her nights on her knees while he sweats and groans above her, making her work for every farthing. No part of her is left unstained by his greedy fingers. He uses her in every way she’d heard of, and some ways she hadn’t. The worst nights are when he shares her with the Beadle like a spit roast, cock crammed in her mouth like an apple in a pig, trapped by four hands instead of two. 

He has decency enough to let her sleep in his bed after he’s finished. He snores peacefully beside her, under damp and stained sheets, unafraid of her vengeance. She’s too broken; her guilt would be too obvious. A quick hanging would probably be a kinder fate than ending up like the last girl- but why would she choose that fate, in exchange for vengeance?

She leaves his house in the emptiness of dawn, her soul hollow and her pockets full. The Beadle escorts her, helping himself to a free fondle. There’s a routine to it: Mrs Lovett prepares her in the evening, basting her in the bathtub, before handing her over and going home to bed. By the time Betty comes home, Mrs Lovett has risen, and feeds her, counting Betty’s damp coins. She sleeps through the morning while Mrs Lovett prays for customers.

One night in summer, when she comes home early enough for Mrs Lovett to be in bed still, the widow pulls back the sheets and beckons her in. Betty is thankful, but this is not a gift. Mrs Lovett takes her hand and slides it between her legs and Betty realises what she has to do. The Judge made her do the same thing to another nameless girl. _Benjamin_ the older woman cries out, as Betty works her fingers faster.

She hears Johanna before she sees her.

One night she arrives early enough to meet the sound of piano music, as the melody drifts through the house. The composer she couldn’t name, but that doesn’t matter. For one moment, she feels something that might be peace, the peace of calm and not the peace of exhaustion. 

One morning she leaves late enough to glimpse a girl- pale, beautiful, unspoiled- peeking from around a door. Their eyes meet, and Betty knows she can only be the girl Mrs Lovett told her about, Johanna Barker. The Beadle hurries her away. She’s not fit company for the Judge’s ward, her rapist is. The world calls her a fallen woman for selling her body, but calls the men who buy it gentlemen. 

As Johanna blooms, the Judge casts Betty as her, in the bawdy plays his fantasies concoct. But it’s only a matter of time until a dummy of Johanna is not enough. The Judge wants the real girl, to deflower and devour. He can’t play the wooer in the presence of a whore, so she has played out her role. The Judge doesn’t care what becomes of her, any more than the girl before her, or the girl before her, or any of the girls and boys going all the way back to Lucy Barker, and before her. 

Like an angel, Sweeney Todd enters their lives, and Betty gives thanks in St Dunstan’s for it. He has a trade, he can bring in money, he could help her, and she wouldn’t even have to suck him off for it. Thanks be to God for Benjamin Barker, but even more thanks for Sweeney Todd. 

When Toby Ragg trails in, she fears a rival for employment at Mrs Lovett’s. The pie shop is her last chance, her last refuge before the syphilitic johns of the streets, or the workhouse. Anyone who might weigh down this lifeboat, she is ready to throw overboard. 

Then the murders begin, and all her problems could go away forever. Mrs Lovett tells her the plan, sure she’ll agree to it- and she does. What value does Judge Turpin’s life hold for her? What value does his death hold for her? She valued his life at the price of the coin he paid her- and he’s not paying her anymore. Lives taken in the barbershop mean meat, and meat means money, and money means life. Their lives pay for her life. 

It is time for her to serve man.

It’s easy to turn her mercy away from them. Where were they when the Judge was raping her? Where were they when she was starving and aching and alone? They abandoned her long before she abandoned them. 

She peels the humanity from them, starting with their clothes. Their coins become lost in the crowd of the pot. Property is harder to make anonymous, traces of them shift and breathe in the objects they carried and touched. After drowning them in the tub, swirling out the life lingering in the fibres of their clothes, all that is left is limp cloth. 

She washes the blood from his clients’ aprons, until it is almost as if they never died. Or at least, as if they never existed; or never came to Fleet Street; and she never touched the traces of them. She remarks drily that she’s the real barber, shaving off their hair, but Sweeney never laughs. 

It’s easier than people think, to serve man. Once they’re dead, and she has handled their heavy, perishable flesh, they’re only food. They’re not people; they’re bodies, like her. She doesn’t think about the laughter crusting along the top, or the hopes lining the pastry base, or the tears spicing the sauce. There’s a routine to it.

The first thing she buys with her new money is some ribbons for herself. She strokes the silken tongues, which will caress her gently. She buys herself a new bonnet; and a boy tells her she looks pretty. He speaks as if to a daisy that he will twirl and not a meal he will devour. 

The pie shop is warm with flesh; and she is warm too. There’s coals on the fire, blankets on her bed, pleasing meals welcomed into her belly and warming her from the inside. What’s a few strangers, compared to that? Compared to her life, knitting itself back together and tenderly warming her raped, bruised flesh?

There’s a cost, of course, but there’s a cost to everything. She has to keep everything secret from Toby, he’s a stupid boy, he wouldn’t understand. She prepares the bodies for Mrs Lovett to grind and cook, just as Mrs Lovett used to prepare her body for Judge Turpin. Body for body, life for life. 

She sees the way Mrs Lovett looks at Sweeney, and she knows that come what may, Mrs Lovett won’t have any children. Toby can’t be trusted with the secret, so she has a chance to make her life a real life: to inherit the enterprise, as Mrs Lovett’s heir. Of course, Sweeney is the key cog in the machine: they need him to supply the bodies. But now the shop has money to keep it afloat, enough to buy good meat in bulk and sell to proper customers. Once Sweeney retires, it could go back to selling ordinary meat pies- or at least, pies with ordinary meat in them. Mrs Lovett refuses to teach her, but she’s seen enough of her in the kitchen to figure out the recipe. 

Then Anthony reveals he’s found Johanna, and Betty glimpses in Toby’s letter as he passes her that the Judge will be lured tonight, to the barbershop. She knows he will not survive his shave. It thrills her- and it frightens her. The men he- they- he has killed have all been strangers, travellers, unlikely to be missed. Judge Turpin will be missed- if not for sentiment, then for status. 

It does not take her long to decide to escape. But how? Betty needs to take as much money and jewellery with her as possible, or fleeing will be more dangerous than staying, without Mrs Lovett noticing either the absence of both or the presence of both on her person. All through dinnertime the two pass and brush each other constantly. Each time she strays towards the parlour, another customer summons her, or Mrs Lovett comes up from the bakehouse with a tray. After the shop closes, Mrs Lovett plants herself in the parlour, and never dozes long enough for Betty to dare rob her. Yet she must leave before the Judge dies, much as she’d love to strip his corpse, as he stripped her in life. She can outrun Mrs Lovett because of age, and she has longer legs than Toby, but Sweeney could catch her. So long as the Judge is yet to arrive, Sweeney cannot stray far from his shop or risk losing his chance. He would not waste that chance to chase her, whatever abuse Mrs Lovett might hurl. 

She begins to sweat when Toby spots Pirelli’s purse, her mouth drying faster than the bones in the bakehouse. Betty watches them descend the staircase and shivers with guilt. She didn’t plan to take him with her, but now it is certain he needs saving, and she does nothing. 

Mrs Lovett has moved the majority of the cash. Betty does not dare to curse aloud as she dashes around, trapped between searching and leaving everything tidy and unbroken. Just as she finds the money, she hears Mrs Lovett’s laboured footsteps on the stairs, and her remaining time must be used to restore everything to its proper place. 

Betty hides behind the pair of them, terrified her terror will show on her face to the visiting Beadle. She watches his retreating back, too anxious to hate, dread pounding louder through her head. If they can kill little Toby they can kill her, and the Beadle’s absence will be noticed from tomorrow- or even today, as dawn can’t be far. This night has felt so long already. 

Can Mrs Lovett smell fear? She won’t leave her side, and being confined with her in the parlour means Betty can’t take the money. She traps Betty in her arms, stroking her reassuringly, promising her that everything they want will come to pass. What colour wallpaper will Betty want in her bedroom by the sea? To each question, Betty gives the first answers that come to mind. 

Betty lingers at the top of the stairs, left to watch for Johanna and the Judge. But when she hears no screams from the bakehouse she realises Toby has escaped. With both Sweeney and Mrs Lovett searching for him in the sewers, now is her moment. She covers herself in clothing for her flight and stuffs her pockets and bodice with each stash of money, crumpling notes and cramming coins. She reaches for a trinket box at the back of the washstand and knocks the jug and bowl to the ground. Neither lands on the carpet.

As she leaps into the shop no one is coming up the stairs. Betty dives under the table at the sign of a shadow running past the shop door. Crawling out, she freezes in shock when she sees the Beggar Woman on the staircase to the barbershop. What’s she doing? What does she know? Where are Anthony and Johanna? 

Betty scrambles to pick up the coins that spilled as she hid, fumbling in the dark, scooping up what might even be a dropped button. She turns as she rises, and comes face to face with Sweeney Todd. Coins glint in her fists. Betty leaps back, but with one nick biting her neck she knows she moved a second too late. Her head slams against the counter as she falls, no time for anything but blind panic, coins spraying from her slackening fists and rolling away. 

The last thing she ever feels is her skirts bunching around her waist as Sweeney drags her body into concealing darkness. 

_Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare_   
_Console you if I could._


End file.
